Writing this here as a stern lesson to myself and to keep myself accountable going forward. I had a wicked start to the day, was up over 2K realized, and had a chance to make it a nearly 3K day, but then I got kinda cocky late day and made two crazy stupid trades starting with this one on RSHN:
In this trade I didn't take the opportunity to take a quick 550 dollars of unrealized profit when the stock upticked with size on the bid to sell everything into but a lot more size on the ask that wasn't coming down.
I got overpatient for a moment, way too long biased, thinking or hoping this had enough momentum to get back to HOD.
When it dipped back down to breakeven, and it was looking quite bearish, with sellers selling on the bid and the ask size getting bigger on the level 2, and I couldn't find the sell button for breakeven even though I had a minute or two to do so with the moderate position size that I had on. I was holding on for profits that I thought the stock owed to me, and it turns out I wasn't done fighting.
Then it broke the support of 0022 and I took a huge gamble and pretty much put all my account in buy orders at 0021 just in front of the big bids sitting behind me at 0020.
Once I was all filled, I was facing an unrealized loss of like -2400 if I were to sell everything into the big bid at 0020.
That bid got hit a good few times and held, which was very lucky for me, because if that bid had not held I would have had HUGE slippage trying to get out into the panic. I was holding 12.5 million shares at one point, and the bid was fluctuating between 40-50 million shares. If the support had broken, probably looking at a 4-5K loss or more trying to get sold at 0019 or 0018 or lower.
Luckily, the bids at 0020 supported and started to stack and uptick. I sold as much as I could for breakeven. I even walked away with selling a small piece for a profit as I sensed that the stock was going to give a bigger bounce. But my psychology was so warped from it all, that I needed to get out almost all my size into breakeven before even attempting to make a few bucks.
This was a scary position to be in, and it all started with getting tilted just the tiniest little bit by not taking the quick profit when it hit the wall of sellers, and then not taking off into breakeven after the wall held, and then breaking support and averaging down HUGE into the next support.
My goals lately were to avoid situations like this and just take easy trades. In the back of my mind I had these goals to size in bigger this month and go for more of the move, since I had confidence to build on from a very decent month of April with nearly zero scary situations like this on the whole month.
Even though I got out of this trade unscathed, I entered a trade on WPG and blew a quick 1400 bucks there when it cracked two different support levels and I wouldn't cut. I still wanted that damn 3K day. Instead I turned a 2K+ day into a +700 day after two big mistakes.
Although in the immediate aftermath, I was super disappointed and shocked at these trades after such a long run of solid trading and very controlled losses, after reflecting on it tonight these were very cheap lessons to humble me and get me back to reality right at the start of a new month. I count myself lucky to have paid for these important lessons so cheaply today, and that I didn't have to learn them on INCC or TONR from last month.
Posted Jun 02, 21 1:13 AMbyGrandPatzer
Received 2 Karmas
Thanks for sharing, Sean - good reminder and we have all been there adding a bunch to a loser to try and save it instead of cutting sooner - As Art of War says, "in this market, Stick and Move!" (something I haven't done a few times too and given gains back...). Thanks for all the inspiration, your commentary and posts are helpful to me and I am sure many others.
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